CHAPTER 26
A buzz at the front door breaks the silence that’s fallen over the kitchen. It’s the building’s intercom system. Someone’s outside. When I press the intercom button by the door, a woman’s voice crackles at me from the street.
“Miss Carpenter?”
“Yes?”
“Hi, Quincy,” the voice says. “It’s Carmen Hernandez. Sorry to just show up like this, but I’m going to need a moment of your time.”
Soon Detective Hernandez is in the dining room, smartly dressed in a gray blazer and red blouse. The bracelet wrapped around her right wrist clicks as she takes a seat. A dozen circular charms dangle from the sterling silver. An anniversary present from her husband, maybe. Or perhaps a treat she purchased herself after getting tired of waiting for him to do it. Either way, it’s lovely. A bolder version of me would try to steal it. I imagine looking into the charms and seeing a dozen different versions of myself.
“Is this a good time?” she says, knowing it’s not. The kitchen is visible to anyone passing through the foyer on the way to the dining room. It’s a gloppy mess of batter and egg yolks. Even if she somehow missed it, there’s Sam and me, two shambles sitting across from her.
“No,” I say. “It’s fine.”
“Are you sure? You look flustered.”
“It’s been one of those days.” I flash a peppy smile. All teeth and gums. My mother would be proud. “You know how crazy it can get in a kitchen.”
“My husband does the cooking,” Hernandez says.
“Lucky you.”
“Why are you here, detective?” asks Sam, speaking for the first time since the intercom buzzer sounded. She’s tucked her hair behind her ears, giving the detective a full view of her hard stare.
“I’ve got just a few follow-up questions about the Rocky Ruiz assault. Nothing serious. Just doing my due diligence.”
“We’ve already told you everything.” I try not to sound worried. I really do. Yet an anxious squeak hides inside every word. “There’s really nothing else to add.”
“You sure about that?”
“Positive.”
The charms of the detective’s bracelet clatter again as she plucks a notebook from inside her blazer and flips through it. “Well, I’ve got two witnesses who say otherwise.”
“Oh?” I say.
Sam says nothing at all.
Hernandez jots something down in her notebook.
“One of them is a hustler who works the Ramble,” she says. “His name’s Mario. A plainclothes officer brought him in last night. Not a big surprise to anyone. He’s got a list of solicitation charges a mile long. When the cop asked Mario if he saw anything the night of Rocky’s assault, he said no. But he did mention seeing something unusual the night before. Two women sitting in the park. Around one in the morning. One of them was smoking. He said she gave him a cigarette.”
I remember him. The handsome guy in leather. The mention of him makes me anxious, with good reason. Sam spoke to him. He saw our faces.
“He identified those two women for me,” Hernandez says. “The two of you.”
“How would he know that?” Sam says.
“He recognized you from the newspaper. I’m assuming the two of you know you were front page news the other day.”
I keep my hands on my knees, where Hernandez can’t see them. Both are balled into nervous fists. The more she talks, the tighter I squeeze.
“I remember him,” I say. “He came up to us while we were sitting in the park.”
“At one a.m.?”
“Is that illegal?” Sam asks.
“No. Just unusual.” Detective Hernandez cocks her head at us. “Especially considering that you were there two nights in a row.”
My forearms ache as my fists stay clenched in my lap. I try to relax them one finger at a time.
“We told you why we were there,” I say.
“Out drinking, right?” Hernandez says. “That’s what you were doing the night Mario the Gigolo saw you, too.”
“Yes,” I say, chirping out the word.
Sam and I look at each other. Hernandez jots something down in her notebook, makes a show of crossing it out, writes something else.
“Fair enough,” she says. “Now, let’s talk about this second witness.”
“Another man-whore?” Sam asks.
Detective Hernandez is not amused. She frowns at Sam, saying, “A homeless man. He spoke to one of the cops canvassing the park about Rocky Ruiz. He says he saw two women at that fancy pool where kids sail their boats. That place was in a book, I think. I read it to my kids. Something about a mouse?”
“Stuart Little,” I say, unsure why.
“That’s it. Nice place. That homeless man sure thinks so. He sleeps on a bench near there when the weather is nice. But on the night Rocky was assaulted, he said he was chased away by those two women. They caught him watching as one of them washed her hands in the water. He said it looked like one of them was bleeding.”
I don’t dare ask if he described these women. Clearly, he has.
“The two of you match the description he gave us,” Hernandez says. “So I’m just going to take a wild guess and assume it really was you. Would either of you like to explain what was going on there?”
She folds her hands atop the table, bracelet hand on top. Under the table, my fists have become rocks. Nuggets of coal being squeezed into diamonds. The pressure splits one of the scabs on my knuckles. A trickle of blood slips between my fingers.
“It was exactly what it looked like,” I say, spinning the lie with no thought. It just comes out of my mouth. “I tripped when we were crossing the park. Scraped my hand up real good. It was bleeding pretty hard, so we went to the pool so I could rinse it off.”
“Was this before or after the purse was stolen?”
“Before,” I say.
Hernandez stares me down, her gaze hard. Beneath the neat hair and tailored blazer is one tough cookie. She probably had to work hard to get where she is. More than the men, that’s for damn sure. I bet they all underestimated her.
Yet so have I, and now here we are.
“That’s interesting,” she says. “Our homeless friend didn’t mention seeing a purse.”
“We—”
For some reason, I stop myself. The lie disappears like a pinch of salt melting on my tongue.
Hernandez leans forward, almost friendly, preparing to begin a just-us-girls chat. “Listen, ladies, I don’t know what went down in the park that night. Maybe Rocky was high out of his mind. Maybe he tried to hurt you and you fought back a little too hard. If that’s the case, it would be in both of your best interests to come forward.”
She pulls back, friend time over. The bracelet scrapes across the table as she grabs her notebook again.
“I even get why you might not want to do that. The man’s in a coma. That’s a serious situation. But I swear I won’t judge you. Not until I have the full story.” Hernandez consults her notes, looks to Sam. “Miss Stone, I’ll even overlook your past brushes with the law.”
To her credit, Sam doesn’t react. Her face is a mask of calm. But I can tell she’s seeking out my reaction. My lack of one tells her everything she needs to know.
“I just want to be clear that none of those things will in any way affect your treatment,” Hernandez says. “Should one of you decide to turn yourself in, of course.”
“We won’t,” Sam says.
“Take some time to think about it.” Across the table, Hernandez stands and tucks the notebook under her arm, bracelet singing. “Talk it over. But don’t take too long. The more you wait, the worse it will get. Oh, and if one of you did, you know, happen to do it, you better pray Rocky Ruiz comes out of that coma. Because if I find myself with an involuntary manslaughter in my lap, all bets are off.”
“We’re not saying anything,” Sam announces once Hernandez leaves.
“We have to,” I say.
The two of us remain in the dining room, trapped in a heady, unbearable stillness. Sunlight slants through the window, illuminating the dust motes swirling just off the table’s surface. Not daring to look at each other, we watch them like people awaiting a storm. All raw nerves and unspoken dread.
“Actually, we don’t,” Sam says. “She’s grasping. She’s got nothing on us. It’s not illegal to sit in Central Park at night.”
“Sam, there were witnesses.”
“A homeless man and a gigolo who saw nothing.”
“If we tell the truth now, she’ll take it easy on us. She understands.”
Even I don’t believe this. Detective Hernandez has no intention of helping us. She’s just a woman doing her job.
“Jesus,” Sam says. “She was lying, Quinn.”
The silence resumes. We watch the dust motes dance.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were in Indiana?” I say.
Sam finally looks my way. Her face is foreign, unreadable. “You don’t want to go there, babe. Trust me.”
“I need answers,” I say. “I need the truth.”
“The only truth you need to know is that what happened in the park is all on you. I’m just trying to save your ass.”
“By lying?”
“By keeping your secrets,” Sam says. “I know too much about you now. More than you think.”
She pushes away from the table. The movement prompts a rush of questions from me, each one more pleading than the last.
“Did you meet Lisa? Were you at her house? What else aren’t you telling me?”
Sam turns away, dark hair whipping outward, her face a blur. It unlocks a memory of a similar sight. So faint it’s more like a memory of a memory.
“Sam, please—”
She leaves the dining room in silence. A moment later, the front door closes behind her.
I remain seated, too tired to move, too worried that if I try to stand, I’ll simply drop to the floor. The way Sam looked when she left replays in my head, gnawing at my memory. I’ve seen it before. I know I have.
Suddenly I remember, which sends me hurrying to my laptop. I log on to Facebook, seeking out Lisa’s profile. More condolences fill her page. Hundreds of them. I ignore them and head to the pictures Lisa had posted, quickly finding the one I’m looking for—Lisa lifting a bottle of wine with a happy glow.
Wine time! LOL!
I study the woman in the background of the photo. The dark blur that had so fascinated me the first time I saw it. I stare at the picture, as if I can will the image into focus. The best I can do is squint, trying to make my vision as blurry as the object in the photo and hope they balance each other into clarity. It works to an extent. A white smudge emerges in the far edge of the dark blur. Within that smudge is a drop of red.
Lipstick.
Sam’s lipstick.
As bright as blood.
Seeing it makes my body hum with an internal acceleration. I feel like I’ve been strapped to a bottle rocket, hurtling through the ozone, streaking sparks until we both explode.